The battle that started the war.

When I was a little 7th grader at north Layton Junior High, I decided I wanted to join the track team. I had been involved in similar activities in the past, and I was excited to start running again. We started conditioning in late March. The first day after conditioning I went home complaining that my hip hurt a little. I thought it was a pulled muscle that would heal within a couple of days.

Two weeks later the pain had only gotten worse. At this point I decided, okay maybe I need to take a little break. I took a few days off from track conditioning, gym class and playing softball.

A week passed, and my hip was still hurting. I was really surprised that it hadn’t healed yet. I was frustrated because I wanted to run that track season and wanted to keep playing softball. I remember venting to one of my friends about it, as we walked laps around the gymnasium during PE. She told me that it would not hurt to go see a doctor. I figured that wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world.

My mom took me to see my family's pediatrician. We explained the situation to her. She said that she thought it might be a pulled IT band. Your IT band is a large muscle running down the side of your leg. She said I may have just overworked it. With time and maybe some physical therapy it would heal just fine. This, however, was not her area of expertise so she sent us to see a sports medicine doctor.

We went to see the sports medicine doctor and again explained the pain I had been experiencing for the past couple of weeks. He said that an IT band injury might make sense, but as we talked more, he concluded that the problem was that my left hip was slightly rotated out of place. This condition was common in growing teenagers.

He tried to rotate it back into place. I think it’s safe to say he didn’t really know what he was doing. He spent about an hour basically just pushing on my hip as hard as he could, occasionally having me switch positions. This did absolutely nothing to relieve my pain, in fact it caused me quite a bit more pain in my hip and my shoulder. He was not a chiropractor. Then he had us come back a week later to repeat the experience again. This was frustrating for us because we trusted the doctor to help us, and it just resulted in more pain and frustration. I have had shoulder pain for the last 5 years due to his “treatment.”

The sports medicine doctor then brought in an athletic trainer that was a colleague of his. They gave me a list of stretches and exercises to do to try and keep my hip in place. Probably about two weeks later we went back to see this doctor. The situation hadn’t improved as much as we hoped it would. This is when they sent me to the physical therapist.

I really liked the physical therapist. He took the diagnosis from the sports medicine doctor and was able to improve the situation. He effectively rotated my hip back into the correct position. He showed me how to check my alignment each day, and how to rotate it back to the correct position when necessary. I was given a list of stretches and exercises to do each day. I continued to go to physical therapy every other week.

Well, after a couple of months I was doing drastically better. I no longer went to physical therapy. I was able to play softball with my team. I thought that the worst hip pain was behind me. It sure is nice to be young and optimistic, isn't it? Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of my long health journey.